In the Spirit of Love
It's a good thing we get to celebrate Valentine's Day in February since the middle of winter always seems to need a boost. It gives us an excuse to focus on love all month long, including the idea that love is not tangible or of this world…read more from Katie:
As I write this, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and though you will read this days later, February will continue to be the month that celebrates love. We’ve all seen love in action, love manifested, but love itself belongs to the ethereal and the spiritual. Love is a transcendent power, foundational to grace and goodness and beauty that gives rise to our better angels. If you have ever loved, then you have experienced the spiritual essence that makes you unique, attracts you to certain friends and lovers, to a life’s purpose and the causes that will take up your time. Love is the language of the soul, and, I believe, a gift from the Divine.
A friend recently shared an essay by Paul Myers relaying a story told for the first time many years after it happened about the tragic and sudden death of his beloved brother-in-law. At the prime of his life, dream job secured and his first baby on the way, his brother-in-law had just hours before told Paul how happy he was. It was just the two of them out in nature, fishing on a beautiful and serene fall day, when suddenly his brother-in law slipped on a rock, tumbled into the river rapids, and drowned. As Paul desperately sought help, he was “witness to a moment of incredible holiness” where he felt “with every fiber of my being that his [brother-i n-law’s] spirit, his soul, was rising out of the canyon.” Paul’s experience was so profound that it eventually needed to be freed from the confines of a broken heart and shared. What a gift, surely born out of deep love, to recognize another’s soul as it leaves this earth.*
We have opportunities every day to exercise our own spiritual beingness. As a football fan, I prayed every night for Damar Hamlin, along with millions of others, after he suffered a cardiac arrest on the football field. Prayer is one of those miraculous powers, like love, that alters the soul, if not the outcome we’re praying for. We have watched helplessly at the tragedy that has unfolded in Turkey and Syria over the last couple of weeks, our common humanity gathering all the spiritual resources at our disposal, including love, prayer, and hope (cash contributions not withstanding) to prove once again that we are most together when confronted with circumstances too big to carry alone. In a world where too much of our time is spent on the material, on our brand or image, on our physical appearance, it is good to remember that in the end, we will be stripped of everything except the most important thing of all, our spirit and the love that remains.
*The River, by Paul Myers, as appeared in A Sense of Wonder, Brian Doyle, Editor